So I went in for a check up with my shoulder surgeon yesterday, and I’m still so mad I could spit nails (as they say here in Texas).

The shoulder’s been doing fine since replacement surgery almost 10 months ago. I can do almost anything shoulder level or below. I can reach, I can stretch, I have good strength. The only issue is, I can’t raise my arm above shoulder height. This has been an ongoing issue since the surgery and we’ve tried different things, including injections and physical therapy to no avail. At one point when I was particularly frustrated the doctor told me I wouldn’t have to live with it forever, that at some point we could go in and relieve some of the scar tissue (which I’m prone to generate) and that would provide greater range of motion.

Apparently the doctor has slept since that conversation.

Yesterday he had the nerve to tell me that as a patient with RA, this range of motion may be all that I can expect. WTF? (For those of you who don’t know what that acronym stands for, the first two words are “what the”.) They replaced the entire joint. Whether I have RA in the rest of my body or not, the new joint ought to work the same.

I’m not going to recount the entire conversation, but he did back off and say that it generally takes about 18 months to achieve full recovery and range of motion without more surgical intervention, so I have several more months to work on it.

I don’t know whether that’s the good news or the bad news, but the other news is that the other shoulder has been bothering me. The X-rays show that there are not any substantial arthritic changes in it, so I may have some minor tears or bursitis going on. I go in for an MRI next week, then back to the surgeon the following week. Hopefully I will have calmed down by then.

Hope everything you need today is within your range of motion. Thanks for checking in.